Determinants of total quality management in the Saudi public hospital : the moderating impact of knowledge management

Public hospitals in Saudi Arabia were undergoing tremendous pressure from the government and also public to improve their level of quality services. Hence, this study is undertaken as an effort to examine the factors that influence total quality management (TQM) practices in Saudi Arabia public hospitals. It has also aimed at examining the moderating effect of knowledge management on the relationship between the independent variables of information technology, employee capacity, employee commitment, and the dependent variable of total quality management practices. This study was motivated by the inconsistency of findings reported in the literature regarding the above mentioned relationship. The inconsistencies have led to the emergence of a new research stream that recommends the investigation of moderating variables that could explain the relationships. Therefore, in the present study, different theories were employed including the contingency theory and the resource-based view to providing an insight into the relationships. The study made use of a survey questionnaire randomly distributed to 259 public hospitals in the Saudi Arabia, of which 154 were found suitable for analysis. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for the descriptive part of the analysis while Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to assess the outer measurement model and the relationships between the variables. The findings of the study revealed that employees’ capacity and information technology were significantly related to TQM practices. The findings also revealed that knowledge management moderated the relationship between employee commitment and TQM while it did not moderate the relationship between employee capacity and information technology and TQM. The study has managerial, policy and theoretical implications along with the recommendations for future researc

Lecturers professional development as a determinant of classroom practices

This study investigates lecturers’ professional development as a contributor to classroom practices based on extant literature related to the present study and theory underpinning it. This review contains a portion of the variables proposed in the present study

Pragmatic failure in the realization of the speech act of responding to compliments among Yemeni EFL undergraduates

The purpose of the present study is to investigate into the possibility of pragmatic failure in the L2 production of Yemeni EFL university learners. It, in particular, tackles the L1 negative pragmatic transfer in the speech act of responding to compliments. The participants of the study are thirty Yemeni learners of English representing the target group and two baseline groups: thirty Yemeni Arabic native speakers and thirty American English native speakers. The researchers used a Discourse Completion Task as to collect the relevant data based on six complimenting scenarios. Data were codified into compliment response formulas and analysed statistically via SPSS in terms of the overall frequency counts of the semantic formulas. The results revealed that pragmatic failure is highly evident in the learners’ L2 production. L1 negative pragmatic transfer occurred in the response strategies of 'Comment Acceptance', 'Comment History', 'Praise Upgrade', 'Return', 'No Acknowledgement', 'Offer', 'Promise' and 'Wish'. They nearly represent 50% of the leaners' response utterances. The learners also showed a tendency of positively assimilating their L2 norms in the realization of compliment responses in half of their response utterances

Multivocality of Saudi COVID-19 discourse in social media posts: a socio-semiotic multimodal perspective

This paper examines the discourse of COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus) in social media posts and argues that the mediated COVID-19 discourse in Saudi Arabia enacted a variety of voices and thematic discourses that cannot be fully evaluated without reference to the locality of the sociolinguistic semiotics of the speech community. It attempts to construct the various non-verbal multivocalities in written and visual COVID-19 discourse present in 24 texts obtained from Saudi social media platforms, namely WhatsApp and Twitter, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the months of February, March and April, 2020. WhatsApp and Twitter are chosen because they are considered the platforms most used by Saudis in Saudi Arabia (GlobalWebIndex, 2020a, 2020b). The study employs a socio-semiotic approach to the analysis of collected data following Kress & Van Leeuwen (1996), mediated discourse analysis (Norris & Jones, 2005; Scollon, 2001) and systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA). The analysis aims at integrating the social semiotics and multimodal approaches to better understand the dynamic Saudi discourse on COVID-19. The discourse on COVID-19 has revealed the dynamic multi-layered nature of governmental, individual and public voices pertaining to COVID-19 multi-discoursal themes, novel multimodal resources and the specific cultural semiotics of Saudi Arabia. The findings of the study revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic mediated discourse is relevant to the local speech community diglossic situation, cultural semiotics, social norms and integrated national identity

Knowledge and Attitude of Saudi Arabian School Teachers with Regards to Emergency Management of Dental Trauma

Injury to both the primary and the permanent dentitions and their supporting structures is one of the most common dental problems seen in children.  School is one of the locations with greatest prevalence of occurrence of traumatic dental injuries.  School teachers play important role in prevention of dental trauma and improving its prognosis. The present study was undertaken to assess knowledge and attitudes regarding emergency management of dental trauma, first aid for avulsed tooth and influence of dental education among school teachers in Abha city. METHODS: The participants were 100 school teachers from Abha city and were interviewed using a questionnaire regarding management of dental trauma.  The completed proformas was collected and the result was statistically analyzed to know the knowledge and attitudes regarding emergency management of dental trauma. CONCLUSIONS: Majority of school staff had little knowledge related to handling of traumatic dental injuries and emergency management of avulsed permanent teeth in school children. Majority of school teachers were eager to have knowledge regarding dental trauma through continues dental education programs and workshops.  First aid training increases knowledge about dental trauma and should be included in the course curriculum of teachers training program

Modality Construction of the Arabic Identity in Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry

Identity expression can be seen at either a personal or a social level. It can be shown in several ways, particularly through poetry. Therefore, this paper seeks to examine how identity is expressed modally in Darwish’s famous poem “Identity Card”. Leech’s (1974) theory of “seven types of meaning” is used as the theoretical framework for the study. As the study aims to figure out how modality is constructed when expressing identity in the poem,  this linguistic norm has been used to track the mood and attitude of the poets in the composition of the stanzas. The findings of the study revealed that identity is expressed modally in the sensations that Mahmoud Darwish carries for the Palestinian, Arab, National, Cultural, Geographical and Historical identities. His language enacted the way he feels towards these six components of his belongings. Nationalism is seen as an important perspective in the affiliations of Darwish. The national identity is, however, the central concept of the poem. The modality provides a rough picture of what is going on in his mind as he experiencing the loss of land. It also comes in harmony with the general cultural context that contributes to his poetic experiences